


here stand giants

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Mentioned Character Death, Swearing, but i don't think that that's ever going to stop hurting, except for molly, set in a hypothetical future where everyone is rescued and nothing hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 00:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15448995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: Beau is the perfect fucking picture of mental health.Fuck you.(or, the life and times of beauregard in three and a half conversations)





	here stand giants

…

It doesn’t come to much, in the end: just a man, standing in a broken room.

Beau can’t hear him. She’s knocked out on the ground, hair splayed, skin black and bruises. She’s breathing, but it’s a close thing.

There are people next to her – two kneeling at her side, and another two in the edges, waiting. They’re silent in a way that makes the man’s skin crawl, cobalt blue clothing a stark contrast to the austere brown furnishings. His wife is upstairs. She hadn’t wanted to see this.

“We’ll be taking her, then,” a woman says, brisk and professional.

The man doesn’t say anything as they drag away his daughter’s unconscious body, as they pack her into the prepared cart and start the long, lonely journey away from town. His purse is lighter, but his shoulders certainly aren’t.

…

…

“You need to sit down.”

Yasha glances up from where she’s wrapping fresh bandages around her forearm, back held up by the trunk of a large tree. They’re camping in the middle of a forest, with a canopy a good twelve stories above their heads and the sun a distant memory. Light filters down in green-grey streaks, illuminating the hollow gaps between the enormous trees that space out at even intervals. The roots are thick and ropey as they dig into the ground, easily reappropriated into functional – if slightly uncomfortable – seats.

“I’m fine,” she says, not sounding particularly bothered by Beau’s aggressive tone.

“No,” Beau says, shouldering her way over to Yasha. “You’re not – you need to sit down, you’re shaking –”

“I’m not shaking,” Yasha says patiently, knotting the bandage and letting her arm fall to her side.

“Yasha,” Beau says.

Yasha gives her a dubious glance, but after a few minutes she lets herself be manhandled into sitting down on one of the roots, long legs just barely brushing the dirt ground. Beau hops up onto an opposite root, so they’re facing each other.

“Oh, look. How cute,” Nott says, coming over to stare up at both of them. “They match.”

“I’m about to throw something at you,” beau says. “Something very pointy, and very sharp.”

“There’s no need to be rude about it,” Nott says, crossing her arms over her chest. “ _In any case_ , I just wanted to come and let you know that we’re heading off in about ten minutes. Caleb doesn’t want to stay here too long.”

In the distance, something howls.

“ _I_ don’t want to stay here too long,” Beau says.

Yasha says nothing.

Nott waits around for a few seconds, probably expecting more of a response, before huffing and leaving. Caleb is with Jester and Fjord, both of whom look bruised around the edges but otherwise alive. Beau has to keep reminding herself: they’re alive, they’re alive, they’re alive. That’s going to balance out any sleeplessness concerning Jester’s new habit of waking up in the middle of the night to squeeze Beau’s arm bloodless.

Beau turns her attention back to Yasha.

She had been…very calm, upon hearing about Molly’s. About Molly. She hadn’t done anything, just blinked and stared and nodded, like yes, of course, that was only to be expected. My best friend is dead. It was only a matter of time – look at him.

Dead man walking.

“Lorenzo is dead,” Beau says, and she’s trying so hard to be tactful, but Fjord hasn’t had much of a chance to pick up where their lessons left off.

Yasha’s face remains slack and expressionless. She reaches up to pull at the new bandage. “Yes,” she says, and that’s it.

Beau blows out a frustrated breath, fingers itching to do something, _anything_. Sitting still and trying to talk out trauma isn’t on her bucket list (she has a bucket list now, apparently). But it’s niggling at her, the way Yasha’s eyes won’t focus, the way the larger woman’s presence seems cut in half.

Molly had said, _I left every town a better place than I found it_ , and Beau wonders how much of that included his best friend. He had certainly left a mark on _Beau_ , and they’d only know each other for the last few weeks.

_Eight months_ , Yasha had said, a world away. That’s how long she’s been out of Xhorhast, into the Empire. How many of those months had included Molly?

More than ten minutes passes, but Nott doesn’t come back to grab them. Jester looks like she’s fallen asleep, head nestled into the crook of Fjord’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to mind, so much, though Beau is going to have a _talk_ with him, if he intends to kidnap her roommate.

“I’m leaving,” Yasha says, soft as a dreamless sleep.

It’s like something’s cut all of Beau’s strings – her shoulder slump to the ground, and she struggles to keep breathing past the sheer _relief_ that sings in her chest. Now that it’s been said – now that it’s out in the open – there’s a kind of intenseness that bleeds out of the air. The elephant in the room has been killed. Thank god. Beau was tired of cutting out her tongue, anyway.

“I thought so,” Beau says, and she leans back and tries to smile past the knowledge of it. She can’t look into Yasha’s mismatched eyes, so she stares at the spot just above her head. “I’m surprised you stuck around for so long, this time.”

Yasha shrugs, picking at a small scab on her right thumb.

Beau breathes in, and in, and in. “Are you coming back?”

Yasha’s eyes jerk up to meet Beau’s, and the air liquifies around them. Beau’s lungs protest as she’s buried under the weight of – of something, something dark and lonely and _clawing_. The nothingness echoes in her head, the lack of noise deafening.

They both look away at the same time, and the connection severs. Beau tries to keep her breathing even and not focus on the dead thing between them.

“I hope so,” Yasha says, and she sounds so horribly small.

Beau rolls her shoulders back to stiffness, stretching out her arms and staring at the darkened silhouette of a sky. “Okay, then,” she says. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

…

…

Beau comes to the Cobalt Soul with manacles weighing down her wrists.

“If you cooperate, things will go much easier for you,” a woman with sharp teeth and sharper eyes says, tinted blue hair falling in a fringe around her chin. “You have such potential, Beauregard.”

Beau spits at her.

Her skin is raw, and blood occasionally trickles down her arm every time she re-opens a welt with her struggling. One of her kidnappers looks distinctly uncomfortable at the sight of it, and she makes sure to struggle around him the most.

_Damaged goods_ , she thinks deep into the night, looking down at herself and laughing.

…

…

Three days out from the decent-sized city, Fjord pulls the metaphorical short straw when it comes to watch.

Beau flashes a grin at him as Jester pouts at having _both_ of her person-shaped-pillows out of reach. Still, she curls up around Nott happily enough when it comes time to get some sleep. Nott puts up some token grumbling, but they’re all bundled in one spot, so Caleb is trapped by the flailing blue arms as much as she is. If anything, Beau would say the little goblin girl looks _satisfied._

Fjord settles himself next to Beau, eyes trained on the enveloping darkness. Beau snaps on her goggles for the first hour or so, but has to take them off when her eyes start to ache from the strain.

“So,” Fjord says, accent thicker off his tongue than before. He clears his throat and glances at her, dividing his attention. Not too much, though – Beau’s noticed that he can’t quite keep still, these days. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Me?” Beau says.

Fjord gives her a look of tolerant amusement. “Yes, you. You almost bit Jester when she tried to volunteer with me.”

Beau crosses her arms and pulls a tired smile over her teeth. “Well, maybe I don’t _want_ you two on the same watch.”

Fjord sighs heavily. “Beau.”

“The last time you were alone together, you were kidnapped!”

“We had Yasha with us.”

“Well, let me tell you, you _three_ aren’t ever allowed to take watch together ever again,” Beau says. “There’s only so much bad luck this group can take.”

Fjord doesn’t look terribly amused – though he hasn’t shut her down, which is saying something. A gentle word would get Beau to drop the whole thing, because she has realised over the course of this horribly cursed trip that she is attached to these people. Almost inadvertently, they had managed to burrow under her skin and wrap around her ribs, pulling her in all different directions. Yasha’s string is taunt and uncomfortable, thin enough to snap. Fjord, though – Fjord is made out of wire, enough to enough to slice through bone.

“I think this group has had plenty of bad luck as is,” he finally says. “I don’t expect we’ll get a reprieve just because of who we put on watch.”

“There’s such a thing as tempting fate,” Beau says. “Not that I believe in fate, but if I did, I wouldn’t want to piss it off.”

Fjord swipes a hand through his hair. His tusks are poking out from his lips, just a little bit. They haven’t had much time over the course of the week to be still, and before that Fjord hadn’t been – well, he hadn’t _been_ present enough to bother with his appearance. Beau wants to reassure him, but no matter what she says, it never comes out right. Someday, she’s going to just stop trying, before she sends someone off a cliff.

They settle into silence, letting it draw out towards dawn. Beau thinks about the last watch she had with Molly, and thinks about all the things that she’ll never get to say to him.

“I missed you.”

It comes out in a panicked rush, and the moment she says the words, she wants to take them back. They feel clumsy, open, far too personal for Beau’s state of mind. Fjord side-eyes her, not saying a word.

Beau takes in a shaky breath, trying to focus. She very deliberately doesn’t look at him.

“I’m really – glad” – that was the right word, wasn’t it? – “That we got you, uh, out of there. We were all really worried” – wait, no, was she supposed to keep this group-related or personal? Gods, she should have taken a page out of Keg’s book and written this down – “I mean, _I_ was really worried. We were all worried! Including me. And Caleb and Nott, of course –”

Ah, what a mess!

Fjord is smiling at her, though, soft and sad and real. Beau breaks off and stares at her clenched fists. Why was this so hard? Why did she always have to make things like this so hard?

“I knew you three were going to find us,” Fjord says. “Jester and Yasha knew, too.”

Beau clenches her jaw and doesn’t say anything else.

“You know, I don’t think any of us have said ‘thank you’ yet,” Fjord muses.

“We were a bit busy,” Beau says. And then – and then Yasha had asked after Molly –

“In any case,” Fjord says, ducking low so he can look Beau straight in the eyes. “Thank you for saving us.”

…

…

“You must learn discipline,” Xenoth says, eye twitching. “Or you will become _nothing_.”

“I’m _already_ nothing, asshole,” Beau says, knees cracking the floor, staff sealed to her hand with sweat. She’s breathing heavily, but that’s nothing new. “You’re going to have to find me some better motivation.”

Xenoth looks down at her, frustration warring his face. After a few seconds, he shakes his head and moves onto the next person, correcting their form with his staff. Beau stares after him for a few seconds, fury winding through her veins, and then collapses down to catch her breath.

…

…

“She will be coming back,” Jester says, with a child’s faith.

Beau doesn’t know how she can do it. She honestly doesn’t know how Jester can stare at her with bruised eyes and a missing tooth and scars (there are so many scars) along her arms and says, _She will be coming back_ , and mean it. Beau doesn’t have that much faith in anything, let alone Yasha.

Beau just shakes her head. “You take the bed.”

Even with Fjord bunking with Caleb and Nott, the two rooms they’d managed to snag at the head of a particularly nasty-looking snowstorm hadn’t been equipped with separate beds. Because the other half of their group was larger (and because Nott had called dibs, much to Beau’s annoyance), Beau and Jester were stuck with a single, while the others shared a double.

“No, no,” Jester says, though she does sag onto the bed with something akin to relief. She rubs at her ankles as she pulls her legs onto the bed to sit cross-legged, while Beau knocks her back against the wall and slides down to the floor. “We are going to have this conversation, Beau.”

“Please don’t,” Beau says. “I’m tired. You’re tired. I think we can put this off till morning.”

Jester rolls her eyes, pulling her sketchbook out of the bag and flipping it open to a random page. Grabbing a pencil, she begins to draw something in broad strokes, all the while keeping her body aligned towards Beau.

“You are being very silly,” she says. “I am fine. Fjord and I are both fine.”

That’s a lie.

Beau clenches her jaw and says nothing.

“Beau,” Jester says, scrunching up her mouth as she tries to find the right words to say what she means. “You are worrying over nothing.”

Beau presses her lips together tighter.

Jester makes a big show of putting her sketchbook flat on the bed, and then rolls so that she’s splayed out on top of the covers, arm flinging out to smack Beau in the face.

“What the fuck!” Beau says, ducking away.

“I think you want a hug,” Jester says.

Beau’s eyes widen in horror. “What? No!”

“Yes, I think you need a hug,” Jester says, scooching further over to the side of the bed. She’s got both her arms out, now, and her grin is as wide as Mollymauk’s. “You’ve been grouching around for the past week, and I think a hug will make you feel better.”

“Jester, don’t you dare,” Beau says. She starts to get up, but Jester is too fast for her, grabbing onto Beau’s shoulders and pulling her against the side of the bed. Beau flails ineffectually as Jester squeezes her tight, and then it’s too late, she’s trapped.

Grudgingly, with something like relief, Beau surrenders to the hug.

…

…

“You’re good.”

Beau’s head jerks up to stare at her instructor, shock electrifying her body still.

“You’re good,” she continues, oblivious to Beau’s surprise. “But you lack the proper form. Keep practicing, though. You could become better if you put your mind to it.”

…

…

(Beau wakes up, snow whiting out the windows.

Yasha is leaning against the far wall, skin pale stone, hair covered with frost, eyes closed.

Huffing out a small laugh, Beau rolls her eyes and gets to her feet).

…

…

**Author's Note:**

> I'm SO ANNOYED I don't get to watch this week's episode because I guarantee that this is already wrong. 
> 
> Also, sorry for the unexpected week-break, my computer died and it was very sad. It's fixed now, thoguh, so that's a plus!


End file.
